Front Panel connectors

In addition, we have 2 USB 2.0 front panel connectors. Worth noting, these are not only relevant for data transfer, but they are also very useful for All-In-One water pumps energy supply and PWM abilities, or for Intelligent PSUs for in and out wattage readout / monitoring.

Finally we do have a Thunderbolt 3 connector allowing easy IO upgrade.

Fan & Pump Connectors

We have 8 nested fan connectors. 2 Of which are Water-Pumps connectors as well, and 1 compatible with All-in-one CPU coolers.

In addition we have 2 temperature sensors very well placed right on top of the Water-Pump connectors. In addition, particularly like the well-spread layout of the connectors. They are all easily accessible, no matter your setup!

Kudos to Gigabyte for this.

RGB FUSION 2.0 Sync Effect

RGB wise, Gigabyte went all out on this board. This is tech-bling at its best!

But if that is not enough, you can add up to 4 additional RGB strips :

2 standard 12V RGB connector and 2 addressable RGB connector.

Note how they have been places by opposing pair at the board extremities, once more allowing easy access and RGB setup in any possible build configuration.

Conclusion

At 195-200 USD dollars, the Z390 AOURUS PRO WIFI successfully delivers a great value board with a premium manufacture and all this at whooping 100 bucks lower than its natural competition.

Entry-level usually try to balance feature and budget. The gaming motherboard market, is saturated, and to be absolutely honest, when you see and review as many motherboard as I did, they do tend to all look alike, and it sometime takes somewhat of imagination to try and differentiate them from one an other…

And it’s not their fault, most of the available features on your motherboard are dictated by the Chipset it runs, and manufacturers have very little to, on one hand had more and stay competitive.

But with Aorus and the Z390 chipset Gigabyte seems to have done what others often forget… they served us a Premium Focuses board.

They focused their money on 3 or 4 features:

An unprecedented VRM which will make no compromise overclocking wise.. including the fearsome i9 9900k

A crazy memory support with 128GB RAM on a dual channel configuration

An obsessively good and premium sound card which raises the integrated audio bar very very high

A reworked and well balanced aesthetic which will please any enthusiasts out there.

But what I really loved about this board, through the entire reviewing process, is that I could distinct a real common sense in every thing Gigabyte did with this board. Everything seems to make sense, and to logically fit together.

The placement of the fan connectors spread out all over the board, water pumps right under the thermistor connectors.. makes total sense… XMP light next to our ram.. RGB connectors paired and placed at opposite of the board. It all make so much sense.. it s almost satisfying.

I also loved some accessibility features… we have large clear writings all over the board … a back lidded XMP , everything a first time builders will need to feel right at home on its first boot.

And finally it masterfully cater to enthusiast builders, bringing in everything the current market can offer in terms custom water cooling features and extreme over clocking.

At that Price range for what this board offers.. might very well be unprecedented. And if you are on a market for a new board… either first time builder or seasoned enthusiasts.. this is were your money needs to be!

4 Comments

Thanks for the great review.
The Asus Prime Z390-A seemed perfect for my build, but you mentioned: “from i3 to i7, 8th or 9th gen iCore CPUs, you are fine with Z390 series, As far as the i9-9900K, Intel is pushing a CPU which should be on a X299 Platform. Not a Z of any kind.”
Now the Z390 AORUS PRO seems like a better match since I want to OC the i9-9900K, but my (1st world) problem is… it does not match my white color-scheme (its silly, I know).
Aesthetics are very important to me, and I really wanted a good match for the i9-9900K, but in white: Does anything like that exist? Thank you.

Hi, I totally understand your delima :)!
If you want a powerful VRM to handle / OC a 9900K AND have a white theme, your only choice is the EXCELLENT Z390 STEEL LEGEND FROM ASROCK!
Here it is : https://amzn.to/35Inkt8 (it’s my affiliate link).

It has enough power stages to stably overclock an 8 core, it has a clear layout and premium cooling components!

that is why, on your board’s PCB you will see a small asterisks above slots 1 and 3. They are the ones who enable both channel 1 and channel 2. They do not represent the same memory channel.

When populated, Slot 1 and 3 use 2 parallel memory channel to feed the CPU, which effectively doubles the bandwidth to the CPU, and runs much faster than bottle-necking a single Master slot (i.e: using your only 2 RAM Dimms on slot 1 and 2).

Don’t kick yourself over this. This is a common mistake and the topic is surprisingly under-documented. But when looking at memory signal tracing, or multi core performances, it is vital to intimately understand how memory channel are functioning on mainstream boards.